You may remember back in January when the Candy Crush developer filed a trademark for “Candy” and challenged the trademark for “Saga”. The dispute certainly made noise among mobile game developers, as well as the IGDA which called their tactics “predatory” and “overreaching”.

But now, King.com had decided to cease its trademark claim after an agreement with Runsome Apps, the developer of Candy Swipe and Stoic Studios, the developer of The Banner Saga.

“I am happy to announce that I have amicably resolved my dispute with King over my CandySwipe trademark and that I am withdrawing my opposition to their mark and they are withdrawing their counter claim against mine,” Runsome Apps founder Albert Ransom stated. “I have learned that they picked the Candy Crush name before I released my game and that they were never trying to take my game away. Both our games can continue to coexist without confusing players.”

Stoic Studios posted a similar statement on their website that an agreement with King.com has been reached. “Stoic is pleased to have come to an agreement with King regarding Stoic’s The Banner Saga trademark, which enables both parties to protect their respective trademarks now and in the future,” posted Myll_Erik.

What’s the agreement? Who knows. King.com didn’t appear to have a strong case if they were trying to copyright “candy” and “saga”. In this writers opinion, it screams settlement and opens the doors to future frivolous patent challenges.

King.com’s chief executive officer posted a statement in January on the company’s website, which claimed King.com had to protect its trademark even when it didn’t think another game necessarily might be confused with it, as in the case of The Banner Saga. The IGDA statement, however, says King.com’s actions contradict its CEO’s claims:

“While we understand and respect the appropriate exercise of Trademark rights, King’s overreaching filing in its application for the Trademark for its game ‘Candy Crush Saga,’ and its predatory efforts to apply that mark to each separate word contained in that name, are in opposition to the values of openness and cooperation we support industry wide, and directly contradict the statement King’s CEO, Riccardo Zacconi, made on 27 January (http://about.king.com/about/our-approach-to-ip).”

The announcement comes after King.com filed paperwork today for a $500 million initial public offering, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.

Game Front has reached out to King.com and the IDGA for comment on the situation.

An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified the International Game Developers Association as the International Game Designers Association. It has since been corrected.

There’s been nothing but drama surrounding Candy Crush Saga dev King.com this week, first with stories of its ambitious trademark moves and then with the claim of an indie developer who says they cloned something he did after spurning King for a rival publisher. The latter is just a game of he said/she said at this point, though, and King issued a statement today to GamesBeat.

““King does not clone other peoples’ games,” a company rep said. “King believes that [intellectual property] — both our own IP and that of others — is important and should be properly protected. Like any prudent company, we take all appropriate steps to protect our IP in a sensible and fair way. At the same time, we are respectful of the rights and IP of other developers.”

They did take down the allegedly offending title, Pac-Avoid, from royalgames.com. King said they did so “for the avoidance of doubt” as it was coded by a third party rather than in-house.

Dev Stolen Goose claims Pac-Avoid was cloned from its game Scamperghost in 2009, with the clone released shortly after because Stole Goose was tipped off about the clone. That whole story can be found here. Taking a side on this from teh presented info, by the way, is what we call “jumping to conclusions.” So don’t do that.

King.com, the company behind the ever-popular Candy Crush Saga game on iOS and Android, now owns the word “Candy,” thanks to the US Patent and Trademark Office.

King has successfully trademarked the word “Candy,” according to records on the USPTO website. This, in theory, gives King control over the word in all sorts of business scenarios, including on Apple’s App Store, and Google Play. In fact, King has already started sending out letters to other game developers who have “Candy” in their game title. The ultimatum: Remove the app, or legally prove use of the word Candy does not infringe on the trademark.

There is a silver lining for developers, according to the folks over at Gamezebo (who initially broke the story): Enforcing the trademark is going to be incredibly difficult, since Candy is such a generic word.

This would be bizarre enough on its own, but the story continues with the word “Saga.” King has a slew of games with the word Saga in the title (Bubble Witch Saga, Diamond Dagger Saga, and so on). So when Stoic went to go trademark The Banner Saga name, King stepped in and formally challenged the trademark. Stoic, LLC filed for the mark in July, and The Trademark Saga with King has been raging ever since.

In order to successfully trademark The Banner Saga, Stoic will have to prove the lack of connection between its game (and the name) and King’s “Saga” titles.